


Everybody Knows

by SteveTrevorsStarship



Series: We May Not Have It All Together (But At Least We Have Together) [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Did I mention angst, Gen, Sort Of, Stars, Starship Enterprise (Star Trek), Tarsus IV, Young James T. Kirk, i got carried away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 10:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16116422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteveTrevorsStarship/pseuds/SteveTrevorsStarship
Summary: Jimmy was innocent, but that was fixed soon enough. JT was happy, until it all went to hell. Jim was broken, but he tried his best. Captain Kirk tried his hardest to be a good man, and he was.James Tiberius Kirk, from beginning to end.





	1. Enterprise

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not going to lie, I was crying when I reread this the first time. I dunno why. It was just like "If this was cannon... well." Btw, teen and up for cussing. Knowing me there's probably some in here. Anyways, welcome to my first work on this account, which is probably going to be mostly Star Trek. Read on children. Read on.

_“Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed; the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. Everybody knows, that’s how it goes.”_

_~~~_

Jimmy loved his mother unconditionally.

When he was six, he would walk around on chubby legs, picking up real books that his father used to own and he would read them, telling his mother constantly about the new information he learned. Sometimes it was an exciting plot twist, other times it was the crookedness of the Prime Directive. His mother would look at him with these broken eyes every time. Every time, he wouldn’t notice that she was constantly thinking _you’re so much like your father it hurts,_ and he would keep talking. The pattern repeated like a rational number until the day she stood up and yelled at him, asking him if he couldn’t take a hint and just _shut the fuck up already._

The next week she left for Starfleet. Frank became their primary caregiver, which was an extremely legal definition because he might’ve been primary but he did not care. Or, maybe he did, just in the wrong way. Sam stopped talking to Jimmy after that, too.

Jimmy learned to read not only books, but also people at age six. All because he loved his mom and wanted her to come back. All that came of it was Sam started talking to him again.

At age seven, his mother finally came home again. She said nothing when she saw the bruises on Jim’s face, though she did dote on Sam’s minimally. She still said nothing when she saw matching bruises on Frank’s knuckles. She left a week later.

Jimmy still loved her. He figured she wanted Frank to hit him because he wasn’t good enough. Because he still made her sad. He wanted to fix it, that’s all.

So he learned how to talk to people without making them angry. In the process, he made Frank angry.

He was twelve when he finally _broke_ . He was furious, not just at Frank, but at his brother, his father, and his mother. He finally realized that the cold-hearted bitch was never coming back, she was too selfish. Sam told him _show me how to be a Kirk in this house_ so Jimmy got in that stupid Corvette and god damn, he showed him. He drove it straight off the cliff and jumped out at the last second, not really caring if he lived or died. Because if he died doing that, then he was really a Kirk. He would have died to save mom and Sam- to keep them together, _happy,_ something they couldn’t do with him there.

He might’ve been mad at his mom, but he still did it because he loved her.

Sam left regardless, and Jim was shipped off to Tarsus IV because Frank’s only ability to pay off his debts was at the bottom of a cliff. A part of Jimmy was excited. A part of him thought, _Maybe I’ll be able to be part of a normal family?_ But he knew that would never happen. He wasn’t that lucky; he was a Kirk, after all.

His theory was proven wrong for a short amount of time. His Aunt was the sweetest woman he’d ever known, even if the pregnant woman ate odd things like egg sandwiches. His Uncle didn’t lay a hand on him, either, and constantly doted on him, calling him a “model young man.” Them and their children accepted Jimmy into their family so gracefully that Jimmy decided he felt like someone new. Someone that was loved.

He adopted the moniker JT.

When he turned 13, Kelvin Day, JT met Governor Kodos. The older man was kind enough, but he was odd. He always stood in the shadows when speaking. Never let anyone see his face. He said it was because he thought leadership should be anonymous and without credit. Everything about him rubbed JT the wrong way. His ability to read body language had developed a lot since he was six, and this man set off alarms that he should have listened to from the beginning. But for once, JT was happy. He had a family and hope in humanity, so he trusted Kodos.

One time he showed up to a meeting with Kodos a little early. That day, Jim wasn’t prepared for what he saw. It was Kodos and his daughter. He could see Kodos’ face. There was nothing especially disconfigured on it, nothing that should have scared JT as much as it had. But the _eyes_ \-- they would haunt JT for the rest of his life. They were Winona’s, they were Frank’s, and they were his father’s. Distant, cold, and dead. Jim, hidden by the corner, snapped himself out of his shock and just managed to hear, “The crops are gone, we must keep ourselves safe--” before he booked it for the nearest exit as silently as possible.

He locked himself in his room for an hour, crying his eyes out but trying not to shut them because every time he felt like if he opened them again he could see Kodos there, staring into his soul. When he finally stepped outside, he got a bear hug from his Aunt, who sat on the other side of the door and cried with him (the complexity of female hormones during pregnancy would normally amuse Jim, but not this time).

When he told her what happened, her face hardened and she called for her husband.

It was too late.

The revolution had already begun.

Outside, Kodos’ men had taken his uncle and their kids. His aunt noticed their absence when she looked out the window, expecting to find them tending to the garden. Instead she saw hypos and men in uniform dragging them away.

She looked at Jimmy and told him, “Run.” As they broke down the door, she pushed him towards the window and said, “ _Survive._ We love you, JT.”

JT faintly remembered he was supposed to be with Kodos as he climbed down from the window, gripping onto whatever he could find. He realized that Kodos wanted him to survive, like his Aunt, when he heard her scream.

He closed his eyes, covered his mouth, and sobbed silently, one hand sliding off a notch in the exterior of the two story house. His hand was cut and bleeding from the rocks but he strengthened his grip and brought his other hand up, finding another notch. He breathed out shakily and found his way down. He watched the men drive away with his family, _his real one,_ before he ran after them, all dangling limbs and hopeless desperation.

It became easier as they went father into the city, nearing the place that had been blocked off with quarantine signs for the past month, since the riots started. The riots Kodos told JT to ignore.

 _I’m a coward,_ he thought.

He followed the car which had eventually become multiple cars and herds of people being shoved into the quarantined chamber. He followed along rooftops that he had found his way onto. He looked at the chamber skeptically before he jumped onto that roof, too, and looked in through the skylight.

It was chaos. The screams, the cries. Until Kodos was there.

His voice was cold when he spoke. Like his eyes.

_"The revolution is successful. But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV."_

He left the chamber. The switch was flipped.

JT screamed with them.

When it was done, they shot the ones that were left alive. JT supposed that the antimatter chamber had done its job for the most part, but with four thousand people to be brutally murdered, there was going to be some stragglers.

That’s why he stayed there on that rooftop until night fell. He stayed until the guards were gone, satisfied that everyone was dead. He stayed until the city was quiet and the moon was mourning, the stars sparkling with the reborn life of four thousand more people.

 _Fine,_ JT thought. _Kodos wants me to survive? I’ll survive. I’ll survive with the people that are supposed to be dead. I’ll survive with the people you deemed worthless, and I’ll do it because of them, too. I’ll do it for the stars._

There was an old picture in his Grandpa Tiberius’ house. It was of a beach, a beautiful one. There was words over it- calligraphy that Jim had thought was quaint at the time. JT realized they were words that may become a new fact of life for him. A fact that opposed Kodos’ twisted tune of eugenics completely.

_It was still early, the mist had not yet cleared from the sea._

_In the distance a solitary figure stood throwing objects out over the water._

_Walking along the debris-strewn beach,_

_I looked a the masses of starfish scattered everywhere._

_The tide had thrown them in, stranding them on the beach_

_As the sun rose higher, they would soon perish._

_Approaching the stranger, I could see that it was the starfish he was_

_picking up and returning to the sea._

_Our eyes met._

_“Do you really think you can help?_

_There are millions of starfish on this beach._

_You can help so few._

_Does it really make a difference?_

_Does it matter?”_

_He reached down and picked up another starfish, looking at it intently._

_“Oh yes,” he replied._

_“It matters to this one.”_

JT found his own masses of starfish: Thomas Leighton, Kevin Riley, Samuel Childress, Erika Molson, Darek Eames, Annalise Brahm, Phillip Johnson, Kirk Rodriguez, Adilene Summers, Alicia Jax, and Michael Braham.

Thomas had half his face ruined by the antimatter chamber. But he survived.

Kevin Riley had hidden in a cave when they took and killed his parents. He was malnourished, but he survived.

Samuel Childress had used his sister’s body to cover himself in the antimatter chamber. He survived, until he was shot and killed by one of Kodos’ men during a supply raid in an empty house. JT killed all of the men and brought Samuel’s body back to the rest of the kids. That was the first one he lost. Samuel reminded him so much of his brother that it hurt.

Erika Molson had beat the living hell out of the men who tried to capture her. She ran and never looked back, until she found JT and the kids. She stopped running then. As the oldest person in the group, she was 17. She was the second to die in the group, and she was the second person in JT’s life that died saving him.

Darek Eames hid himself in the cupboard when the men came for his family. It was easy enough, considering he was all skin and bones. All of them were. There was nothing left to eat on Tarsus; that’s why all those people had been killed. At least, that’s what JT came to realize. Darek found JT and his kids when they raided the same house. Darek, like Kevin and Thomas, survived. The doctors said he was never the same, though. JT doesn’t think any of them were.

Annalise Brahm and her brother Michael were found in the forest, eating poisonous berries because they were all that was left. JT took them in and nursed them back to health. Michael looked up to JT, even though he was a foot taller than him and two years older. Kodos’ men found one of their campsites and took Annalise. Nobody saw her after that, even when the group tried to attack the place they believed Kodos governed from. During that attack Michael himself was taken. Alicia, who had been his girlfriend since forever, tried to go after him. But JT had made a promise to Michael, and he held her back. The rest of the kids got home safe, but the next week Alicia killed herself, unable to live in that hellish world without him.

Like that, thirteen kids became seven. The rest of them got through to the end with their own bits and scrapes, but they survived. They survived until the starships came and got them. They survived until they were separated by the doctors.

And then, for some reason, they were barely alive.

That’s what the doctors said.

JT especially.

He was kicking and screaming when they tried to hook him up to the Saline. He yelled his Aunt’s name when they got out the hypo and shot whatever sedative it was into his bloodstream. When he woke up and his kids weren’t there and it was instead his mom and brother, he screamed louder. They put him under again and again until they finally just let him kick and scream until he passed out himself.

The next time he woke up, it was night outside. JT looked outside the window and realized he wasn’t on the ship anymore, he was in Riverside again. He recognized the area where they planned to build a new starship in honor of the Kelvin. It was an enterprise of its own-- from what JT heard before Tarsus IV’s communications cut out, it was going to have all of the most advanced technology in one place and would hold up to 1,000 people, all depending on what mission she would be on.

They just had to find a name for her.

“Jimmy?” JT turned to see Sam, blinking sleepily at his bedside. When he noticed JT was fully awake and hadn’t made a sound, he sat up straighter and asked, “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Can I do anything for you, Jimmy?”

“It’s Jim,” he immediately corrected. He didn’t know why; it just seemed right. His brother seemed to stop breathing for a moment when Jim asked, "Could I borrow your computer for a second?"

After a moment of recovery, his brother said, "Wha- why?" Jim shrugged nonchalantly, as though he hadn't just survived against all odds and been through a thoroughly traumatizing experience that would probably effect every decision he made for the rest of his life. 

"I thought of a new name for the Starship they're building in a couple of years. Don't worry, I won't get caught this time."

Jim has never seen him so pissed in his entire life, but his older brother got him the computer anyways.

The stars were beautiful that night.


	2. Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part got cracky. kind of. not really, but it still has my signature "I'm trying to write something serious but my mind is WAY too funny for that" so here we are. Have fun?

Throughout his first year at the Academy, Cadet Jim Kirk had heard enough about Tarsus IV. Everything they said about it was simultaneously right and wrong. They were right about the crops, and somehow they’d gotten Kodos’ speech exactly right (probably courtesy of some of the other kids, who would have those words haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives). But they were wrong about the people that died, and the people that survived. 

The people that died were already honored. The stars honored them, and JT honored them when he survived. His Aunt got his wish, and that’s all that mattered to him. The people that survived weren’t broken. They were just scarred; just frayed a little on the edges. And in a way, they were stronger, and they loved a little more, because they knew that you can lose everything in a matter of seconds. Thomas Leighton found a wife, Kevin Riley planned to go into the Academy like Jim, Derek became a well-respected agricultural scientist, Phillip travelled the world looking for himself and had fun doing it, Kirk went into medicine and adopted a few kids of his own, and Adilene worked to educate everyone on the Tarsus IV incident, building memorials in honor of everyone that had been lost.

It wasn’t until his second year that the Academy finally got the lesson on Tarsus IV right. 

Jim woke up that morning hungover and unsuspecting, per usual. Bones, being the complete dickhole he was, had opened the curtains and was yelling at him as loud as physically possible, or maybe that was just the headache. Jim groaned and finally got up five minutes before class started. Bones had already gone to save them seats in their class, and Jim got ready and ran in about a minute late. He tried his best to be discreet, he really did, but when he saw who was inside, he tripped and fell on his face. 

“Cadet Kirk,” the professor said from next to the young woman he was clearly introducing to the crowd, “Is there a reason you’re late?” 

“Huh?” Jim was his intelligent response as he stared at the olive green eyes that once belonged to a dead 9 year old named Annalise. 

When the girl saw him, she tilted her head and gave him an amused smile, her eyes dancing with mirth as if to say,  _ I know who you are, dork, but I’m not going to say anything because you’re pretty emotionally traumatized by embarrassment already.  _

Jim cleared his throat awkwardly and stood up. He looked over at the professor and said, just because it seemed like all he had left to do, “Actually sir, there’s a reason. See, they had these _ great _ parfaits at the breakfast bar--” 

“Sit down Kirk, before you embarrass yourself further.” 

Jim gave him a smart salute and said sarcastically, “Yes, sir!” just for shits and giggles. He grabbed his bag and ran up to join Bones, who gave him a slap on the back of head. He just gave his friend a dopey grin, happy because  _ holy shit, Annalise is alive _ .

“So,” she said as she stood in front of the class, a grim look on her face, “where should I start?”

Throughout the entire lecture everyone took notes (they were expected to write a full 1500 word paper on how the eugenics Governor Kodos applied to the situation were comparable to the eugenics created by Francis Galton) except Jim, who faked it horribly. He kept his head down the entire time, his pen barely scratching along his paper. Bones gave him odd looks the entire time, probably wondering why the JT in the blurry photo from the Starship resembled him so strongly, even though Annalise took about two seconds before skipping past the slide, just enough so it didn’t seem too suspicious. 

Despite the depressing topic of Tarsus IV, she kept it light, cracking jokes about how her brother was the clumsiest human being ever, constantly tripping over thin air. She even joked about the one time JT fell on his ass trying to climb a tree. And she laughed harder when she said that he got back up and tried again at least five more times before he finally realized he was too short. 

There was always the moments when she would get quiet, talking about what led to what and how she got out alive. She never mentioned her capture or how her brother died, though, so Jim filed those questions away for later. Or maybe never. He didn't  _ really  _ need to know; he was just happy she was alive.

At the end of class she asked, “Any questions?” and immediately five kids put their hands up. What really scared Jim was that one of those five kids was Bones. Annalise raised her eyebrow and nodded at his gruffy friend. 

“Do you still talk to any of the other kids today? Like, for example, JT?” 

~~~

Captain James Tiberius Kirk loves the stars. 

He loves them because they sparkle with the light of thousands of souls. He loves them because they mourned with him that night. He loves them because they taught him how to be tough when he had to be tough and they taught him how to love when he had to be loving. He loves them because he already had the sky in his eyes, but never the stars. He loves them because they thank him every day, with a happy crew (“Happy is a human emotion, Captain.”), a life full of excitement (“That isn’t excitement Jim, that’s friggin’ suicide!”), and a home (there’s no quote for this one-- his home is quieter than Spock, and it hums and whistles and occasionally it sounds a red alert but that’s okay, because the paperwork was getting boring anyways). They thank him for living when he was Jimmy, for surviving when he was JT, and he might’ve just been _ existing  _ when he was Jim but at least he tried, and they thank him for thriving as Captain Kirk. 

The stars love Captain James Tiberius Kirk, and they started loving him the day he was born, when his father became a star. 

~~~

_ “ _ _ Take one last look at this Sacred Heart, Before it blows, Everybody knows.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is a short little sort of one shot, but have some more Star Trek Fanfic! Go on, read! One of the accounts I LOVE to explore is @Beamirang because her fics are greeeeat and they make my day better and yeah. She's on ff.net and ao3 now so go check her out.


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